A. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to imaging systems and more particularly to image acquisition systems that acquire and digitize a video image for subsequent display or storage, wherein predetermined areas of interest of the image may be selected for digitization and wherein various portions of the image may be displayed with varying degrees of resolution.
B. Description of the Prior Art
Various imaging systems are known including special effects generators that modify the video field to create special effects, and specialized imaging systems that may be used in the medical field and for industrial and scientific applications. Such systems include systems for measuring time varying phenomena that occur very rapidly or very slowly and systems that track the movement of points of interest as such a point moves from frame to frame. Examples of prior art imaging systems are disclosed in "Using 64K DRAMS In Graphics Applications", Electronic Imaging, November, 1983 pp. 62-71 and in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,205,341, 4,238,768 and 4,319,267.
While the imaging systems of the prior art are generally useful for their intended purposes, it would be desirable to provide a system and method for selectively acquiring digital information representing desired pixels of an image array in order to select pixels representing areas of interest, and to vary the spacings between acquired pixels to provide greater resolution in the areas of interest, and to display such pixels in patterns and spacings that are either the same as or different than the pixel spacings of the original acquired image array.